In a new interview with PCGamesN to mark Owlcat's 10th anniversary, studio co-founder and creative director Alexander Mishulin talked about Owlcat's history and upcoming projects. Two things really caught my eye: Owlcat's still got hardcore CRPG fans covered, and the studio's bulked up to the heavyweight division.

"We will continue to make CRPGs because we love them," Mishulin said of the action-RPG versus CRPG question. "We do not want to become stagnant. We will be trying different approaches for our RPG games, trying to find the best possible fit for the idea of the game.

"We want to create the best possible RPGs, we like them, we play them, we get inspired by them and we want our games to feel the same, that we would enjoy them ourselves and hope that they will inspire someone else to create even better ones."

Owlcat's first three games share an engine, design sensibility, and overall structure⁠—you're a monarch or otherwise leading a state-level organization⁠—so the very Mass Effect-like The Expanse: Osiris Reborn represents a huge, if exciting, departure. I didn't think there was a danger of the studio permanently pivoting away from the house style that put it on the map, but Mishulin's statement is reassuring.

It's also backed up by the other game Owlcat has in development, Warhammer 40K: Dark Heresy. It iterates on Owlcat's CRPG engine and the ruleset of Rogue Trader in a way that echoes the jump from Pathfinder: Kingmaker to Wrath of the Righteous.

But it's also a big departure in its own way: Owlcat is trading its customary ruler fantasy and light 4X elements for an ambitious, highly reactive, detective/investigation metagame⁠—it sounds rad.

The studio has massively expanded to work on two projects simultaneously: Both PCGamesN and Wccftech have reported that Owlcat currently consists of around 600 employees. Looking at other RPG big boys, Larian was north of 500 at last check-in, and Obsidian is currently in the low 200s following Microsoft's latest layoffs.

According to a 2024 fact sheet, CD Projekt Red has 1,134 worldwide employees, while a 2023 financial statement had its heartland studio in Warsaw accounting for 615 of them.

BioWare was likely pushing a 500-600 person headcount at its fullest extent in the 2010s (with the Montreal and Austin branches), but back of the napkin math has it now at 100 or fewer employees following post-Veilguard layoffs.

It's unclear how many separate offices Owlcat's staff is spread across. Originally founded in Moscow, the developer is currently headquartered in Paphos, Cyprus. This expanded manpower is certainly in the "Yep, that's enough people to handle two RPGs at once" range, and you could imagine Owlcat satisfying both action and CRPG fans by keeping up a multi-game approach, similar to what BioWare managed with Mass Effect and Dragon Age during its golden years.

I'm not sure whether to feel sheepish or smug that I exclusively come to Owlcat games late. On the one hand, I feel like a fairweather fan of this underrated RPG powerhouse, one whose output and ambition is honestly kind of scary.

But on the other hand: Owlcat has yet to have a single smooth launch. PCG weekend editor Jody Macgregor gave Rogue Trader a 59% in his review at launch in December, 2023, and I don't blame him one bit.

I hated this game when I tried the beta that fall. The fun unfamiliarity of being a 40K newcomer was outmatched by the frustrating unfamiliarity of a complicated new RPG system⁠—Rogue Trader is at least as intricate as Pathfinder, but without any built-in, D&D-derived muscle memory. The fact that "hit points" are called "wounds" made me feel indignant in a way I struggle to describe. You're not special, stop calling them that!

But perhaps Rogue Trader has earned its silly little proper nouns by now. With the release of its Infinite Museion DLC, I decided to finally dive back in and give it the second chance I'd always planned to, just like Jody did last year.

Similar to Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous and Kingmaker before it, Rogue Trader has grown into an all-timer RPG. It's also hit one of my main quality indicators for the genre: I'm so obsessed with its character building that, dissatisfied with the first guy I made after 20 hours, I rolled a new one and beat its first act again in half the time.

In the Navy

When I played Rogue Trader in beta, there were no guides I could rely on, and its level-up screen made for a quagmire of effects, stats, and nouns with little indication of what was actually good. I'd recommend a guide, either from cRPG Bro or Revan619 on YouTube⁠.

For my playthrough on the notch above normal "Daring" difficulty, I'm following builds for my main guy and every single companion, but after 30 hours of gameplay, I do finally feel like I have enough knowledge to make tweaks at my discretion.

On my first guy, I made what's widely agreed to be the most powerful single build with the⁠—let me take a deep breath here⁠—"Death World Pyromancer Psyker Blade Dancer Executioner."

It's built around a few abilities that make you more powerful the more injury debuffs you have on you, as well as a set of powers that let you spend hit points and kill enemies to get a ton of extra actions per turn. It's certainly powerful, and it's always cool to be an edgelord with two swords, but it just felt janky and stale after a while.

I found I was having way more fun controlling the companion Abellard, whose build was basically identical to one buildsmith Revan dubbed "the most fun for new players." That's right gamers, the Navy Officer Warrior Arch Militant. Basically: You dual wield a sword and a gun. When you score a critical or parry an enemy with your sword, you automatically make a free attack with the gun.

Eventually, gun attacks make your sword more powerful, and vice versa. It feels badass, ultimate lightning tank mode in the middle of all the enemies, instagibbing beefy dudes with your signature one-two punch and parrying chumps left and right.

Tally-ho

I just beat the final boss of Rogue Trader's first act with my dark future seaman, and I keep playing it out in my head. Spoilers, but you get ambushed by a Chaos Space Marine with twice as much health wounds as the next-strongest guy in Act One. The world you're on just had its sun go out, and in-between shredding your party with his bolter machine gun, this bad hombre will blow up the last remaining shuttles offworld one-by-one.

That obviously can't stand, so I had my whole party turn and focus on beef boy, only sending my main man Abellard to tank the annoying support mooks. I knocked off the Space Marine's first 200 hit points wounds with three bolter salvos from my freaky gun nun companion, Argenta⁠—two on her own, and the third with an extra turn courtesy of fish princess Cassia.

That teed the boss up for a finisher from my Rogue Trader, wiping out his last hundo or so of health wounds with a critical charge and revolver shotgun to the face.

I felt incandescent. That was one of the best-feeling things I've done in a game in a month of Sundays, and I got a nice little achievement (only shared by 12.4% of players!) for taking him down without losing any of those shuttles.

There's also a whole RPG here, by the way⁠—companions, romance, skills, planetary management, Rogueing, Trading⁠—but that turn-based combat and buildcrafting is the perfectly-charred neapolitan crust of this pizza. Rogue Trader is redeemed, here's hoping Owlcat's upcoming Dark Heresy just bangs like this outta the gate⁠—it sounds like it will.